Maximum Paula sample rate in PAL mode?

[ChaosLord]

I have played countless samples over the years in PAL mode and I can tell you that 28Khz is not reliable.  I don't care what the documentation says.  The samples play correctly sometimes and sometimes not.  Its weird.

I would stick to 27Khz or less to be 100% safe.

I think the unreliability may be related to the screenmode that is currently being displayed at that exact second.

[ChaosLord]

I never played a sample using AMOS.

I only play samples using:
Various versions of Protracker
Octamed Sound Studio Professional
Various asm protracker replay routines
Various versions of Octamed asm replay routines

All produce unreliable results with 28Khz samples on my NTSC A1200 in PAL mode.

I am afraid that once you display some sprites or change screenmodes or whatnot that things will go wonky.

[ChaosLord]

From AHRM 89, p. 137:
Minimum sample time in DMA mode is 124 ticks for NTSC, 123 for PAL.

Ticks are based on 28.63636 MHz (NTSC) or 28.37516 MHz (PAL) main oscillator, divide by 8.
Maximum sample rate for a PAL machine in PAL mode: 28,836.54 Hz.
The absolute maximum is an NTSC machine in PAL mode: 29,101.99 Hz.

Those are theoretical maximums.  Theoretical maximums require the support of software which is 100% perfectly coded.  As the perfect way to code Paula-banging software was never documented anywhere official, you just can't count on these sample rates.

Practical maximums are different and are extremely dependent on the exact hyper-technical coding technique used.

If u insist on using theoretical maximums then don't be surprised when ur samples play perfectly for a while then one day the exact same sample starts freaking out because the temperature in your room is 1 degree warmer than usual. :crazy:

Good luck. :mickeymouse:

[ChaosLord]

@Zac67

Your description left out a ton of details.

Try writing such a program and you will have a 99% chance of it failing on either very slow samples, very fast samples, or both.  Or your method will waste tons of CPU power.

There is a 1% chance of success based purely on luck that you might somehow code it just the right weird way to work.